Over the course of the last 5 years, I built a media organization on the back of Google's flagship social network Google+, building some fairly massive brands, communities, and corresponding brand pages that now total well over the half million member and follower mark. But after 5 years of supporting Google, I've come to the realization that the tech giant I've long supported myself has never truly supported me :(
It wasn't just 5 years of building brands though, it was 5 years of watching Google make one careless decision after another, not just with Google+, but with its video sharing platform YouTube as well. It was also 5 years of watching Google take its biggest supporters like me, along with all those hard working creators on YouTube, and throw us all under the bus.
As for Google+, I was among its early adopters, having built some of the very first communities ever created on the platform when Google first launched the feature back in 2012. One of those communities, Strategic Social Networking, was created just one day after communities first launched; a brand that I've worked for years to grow to well over 160,000+ members today, and is by far not my largest community on the platform.
In the beginning, I saw Google+ as a road to fresh opportunities and new possibilities. At the time, I was a college educated IT specialist who had recently lost my tech support business I operated for close to 7 years, no thanks to a worthless U.S economy. And, to add insult to injury, my uncle's multi-million dollar veterinary company had failed that same year as well, and practically over night. It was a lot to ingest really. One moment I was a millionaire driving around in a $60K Cadillac, the next I was barely scraping by, and now I was forced to begin selling everything I owned to merely cover even the most basic of living expenses.
Given I was out of work, burning through money, and running out of options, I figured I would start blogging about various subjects in the IT industry in hopes of monetizing off of the ad revenue. After all, I had already long had an approved Adsense account.
It wasn't much later I joined Google+ and made my first post on the network. That post blew up, and from then on things just ballooned! In fact, to date, between my personal blog posts and the posts of my media on G+, I've racked up well over a 1/4 million shares across all major social networks over the last 5 years, with the majority of those social shares being to the G+ network.
Despite the fact that when I joined G+ I wholeheartedly understood the technologies that drove the web, I didn't understand the psychological aspects of things like social media. It was something I had to learn. But regardless, people liked what I had to say, and in terms of growing media across the web, the relationships I built with others in the IT industry and the support I received from the public panned out in my favor.
Industry specialists and even the notable SEM Rush seemed to promote their latest ideas through Strategic's community on an almost daily basis. This gave both myself and Strategic real credibility.
Even my gaming brand born on G+ in late February of 2013, Gamers Bay, would soon after launching be the community of choice for brands like Virgin Games to promote their newly implemented e-sports initiative, and we later worked with the creators of the iconic PC game series The 7th Guest and The 11th Hour, Trilobyte Games, with more projects than I can count.
Sadly, coming mid 2015, I had realized that despite all those years of working 75 to 90 hours a week had never produced a red cent. It was a harsh reality to realize that 100,000 views on a blog post would hardly earn me enough to eat dinner, much less pay my bills. In fact, by that time my media organization was tens of thousands of dollars in the negative, and badly bleeding money. And for a period of time all my media fell idle.
In 2016 at the request of my media organization's staff, I agreed to give everything a fresh start, and we would seek new ways to monetize off the media we operated. The idea was simple, create channels for each of our media organization's corresponding brands, and monetize off the ad revenue from YouTube. At the time, we realized we still had a fighting chance with YouTube, despite the prospects of web publishing being down the tubes.
Then came Google's red tape and massive road blocks they seem to put up everywhere. By mid 2017 YouTube was demonetizing our videos left and right, and in light of a 2nd failed redesign of the Google+ platform, once again our media was laying on its deathbed. Despite the fact the community wholeheartedly stated they hated the redesign, Google proceeded to force it down the throats of the platform's users anyway, and tens of thousands began to run for the exit and never came back.
I honestly felt really insulted that Google would demonetize our videos, especially given the fact we moderated for the Google+ network. Here Google took our word for it when we reported users for breaking their guidelines, and despite entrusting us with the power to enforce their guidelines, now Google was saying they didn't trust our content? Yet, we're the judge and jury of everyone elses content. How does this make any sense?
The real slap in the face after supporting Google for the last 5 years was when I woke up to a dreaded email recently, telling us they were terminating our agreement for the YouTube partner program for Gamers Bay's channel, effective Feb 20th of 2018 unless we can manage to hit the 1K subs mark.
Sadly, despite the size of Gamers Bay and the other media we built on Google+, its never been an easy task trying to convert G+ followers to YouTube subscribers. While our supporters on Google+ will share our content everywhere, they rarely ever click thru to our channels.
Despite 5 years of working to keep the Google+ platform clean of spam and bad actors, doing all the dirty work for Google, they're going to throw us in the trash anyway. Its not like we're brand new to Google, why are they trying destroy us? I just can't make any sense of their actions.
So what did I get for 5 years of promoting and helping to build Google+ to what it is today? I got failed health, not a red cent to my name, and I'm on the verge of homelessness. All the while, Google rakes in tens of billions annually, and they hoard all the money for themselves. Meanwhile, Google did nothing but profit off the work of myself and others as YouTubers spent years dumping millions of videos loaded with ads into our Google+ communities. Google keeps all the ad revenue, gives us nothing, then we do all the work.
I realize now the only one who truly benefited from my tens of thousands of hours of hard work was Google themselves. They could honestly care less whether I or anyone else who supports them were dead or alive.
The tech giant did everything they could to try and make me feel important early on in order to win my support too. They promoted many of my communities, blog posts, and I had direct connects with Google staff in case I had a problem, compliments of then Google+ chief Vic Gundotra. Back in 2013 Larry Page even reached out to me on Google hangouts to ask me what I thought of the platform, despite the fact I honestly didn't know who I was even talking too when he first contacted me.
Fast forward 5 years and I've helped make the tech conglomerate Google a very rich man, and never been given so much as a thank you in return. I know now the reality of the situation is that Google executives are heartless human beings who care nothing for the welfare of those who supported them the most.
It's the whole reason I've decided to venture outside of Google and look for new possibilities once again, including with platform's like Steemit and DTube; that by the way actually reward their creators and supporters for a job well done. Too bad I can't say the same for Google.
While I honestly have not one ounce of faith left in Google, I do plan to continue to support all the amazing things I built on their platforms. I'm honestly very proud of the work I did there, just not so proud of Google themselves. But I haven't given up on the hopes and dreams that Google so proudly crushed.
Also, allow me to introduce myself to the community here. My name is Daniel Imbellino! I've opted not to include my name in my bio because its kind of long, so I figured keeping it short was a better option. I go by Daniel or DJ, whichever you prefer to call me is fine :)